Deep Purple

Apollo Theatre , Manchester.

Saturday 12 October 2013 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Unmade in Manchester"

Ah, Deep Purple......they used to be one of my all time favourite groups....sadly not any longer.

When Jon Lord retired I thought they should have taken the opportunity to call it a day with dignity.....when he died, I couldn't really believe it that they carried on. I went to see them some years ago with replacement keyboard player Don Airey (see 06/11/2004) and I was really quite disappointed - they were clearly going through the motions, not enjoying it, and Ian Gillan was plainly struggling. After a not too good experience, I decided that "that was that" for me with them. I sensibly missed them the last time they toured - with an orchestra, no less.

What made me go to this concert was not that I changed my mind, but that I was “persuaded” into it by a very good friend, who hadn't seen them before. I did sort of warn him what to expect, but "no" was not going to be taken for an answer.

I was not wrong - Gillan just could not hit the notes, and even worse, the band were badly out of tune on at least three occasions. Because he couldn't hit the notes on the old stuff, it meant that there was a lot of new stuff - he made a better stab at that, but the problem was that the material was unknown to me and quite frankly, was poor. To further cover up his inadequacies, Gillan spent more time off stage than on (presumably taking his throat medicine) whilst the group indulged themselves in a quite ridiculous amount of solos and interminable jamming sessions. They have always done a fair amount of this of course – see the classic live album "Made in Japan" - but tonight it appeared to be simply an excuse to pad out time because they didn't really have a singer. To be honest, at times it was really quite excruciatingly embarrassing.

I believe that at one time they were officially "the loudest band in the world" - well, tonight you could probably have conducted a call on your mobile phone with little difficulty whilst any of the interminable solos and jams were going on in the background: NOT good.

I don't want to say any more about them. They don't deserve it and I felt they got my money by false pretences.

Give up now - for God's sake!
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I quote my friend's view of the concert from his Facebook postings - and I agree with every word:

They played a lot of new stuff. Only played Strange Kinda Woman, Space Truckin,Hush, The Mule, Perfect Strangers (best track of the night), Smoke and Black Night on the encore. Total of about 1 and 3/4 hours on stage. 4 out of 10, should do better
 
….Gillan couldn't sing he spent more time off stage than on. Steve Morse sounded muted, Don Airey was extremely average with quite a few mistakes in his two solos. Glover was fine Paice stood out as the class act. But every track was extended to cover for Gillans' lack of voice. I have never seen Deep Purple before but I have seen Gillan 6 times, Rainbow 3 times, Whitesnake 4 times I even have Clear Air Turbulence but this was a really poor concert